The Future You Avoid Is Riskier Than the One You Face with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman

23:54Well, the faculties are definitely going to change, but let me give you an example that I've been telling a bunch of the, you know, educators, university people, because it's a very common thing to say, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're at the day of the, you know, the GBD5 launch. I'm not going to write an essay. I'm just going to have GBD5 write the essay and I'm going to submit it. And I'm not going to have to think or suffer or, you know, stare at a blank page in order to do that. Actually, in fact, I actually think the, the, the, our capabilities for training human beings is going to go way up because what's going to happen is examination is all going to happen by AI.

24:30And the examination will be like oral exams for PhDs, right? Like we all learn going through college, you know, to say, hey, I can predict the three to five questions that are likely to be on the exam. I'll prepare for those. I prepare just enough to be able to answer those within a three hour period and get a good grade. And that's my competence level. Right. Now, what we're going to have in small n years. This might be three, right? Two, could be five, where literally the cost of examination is zero. And literally you can start taking the examination whenever you want. You could take it on day two of the class and take it on day 17 as well, and 23 and however you learn.

25:12And part of the reason why we reserve oral exams for PhDs is because it's the one that you have to, if you're really going to do it, You have to prep the whole area. Yeah. Like you have to be A to Z on it. And so what I think is actually going to happen is we're going to be able to calibrate what we set as a human society.

25:32Simon Sinek:Yeah. For which skills do we want? How do we want those examined? And how are people prepared? So I actually, I'm not a idiocracy believer here. I may, I may, no, no. This is our question of our choice about how we set this up. And actually, in fact, it's going to get a lot more rigorous. I think you make a very good point with regards to school. Yeah. But let's now leave school. And the AI is writing the press release for me. It's writing the blog entry for me. It's writing my article for the newspaper. It's writing my book for me. And very competently, I might add, when I was in school, I had to do the studying to demonstrate to the test that I knew it.

26:18Simon Sinek:But once I go get a job, I'm not getting tested anymore. They only want me to do a good thing, like write a piece. And that's it. That's my job to keep writing press releases or whatever. So where is the learning? Where is the struggle? Where is the ability to hone your craft if you're actually never doing your craft? Well, what I think as opposed to the, like if you compare person A and person B competing, and today's environment is, you know, person A and person B sit down on a blank page and have to craft what looks like a press release. Right. You know, a press statement. And you go from scratch.

26:57That's no longer the – That's no longer a thing. The thing. But then the question is, well, what does it look like? Because person A and person B are still going to be competing, you know, in our universe. And maybe it's the – which way does it prompt the AI better, recognize the strategic game of the nature, do things that are better evocations for, you know, the competitive game of press releases.

27:25Simon Sinek:I don't know if the construction is a fair construction, right? Because school, it was me versus test. Yes. You're talking about not, we're not always in competition. You know, we're in competition sometimes for promotion. We're in competition sometimes for the job, But sometimes I'm the guy. I'm the guy doing the thing. I'm the guy. There's no competition. So what do you do when there's no – because the competition is in a sense a test, a measurement. Well, but our whole society is based on competition. There's competition for the job. There's competition for between companies, between products.

28:02There's competition for the promotion. That doesn't mean that necessarily each one is a directly easily measured one. But like, for example, you know, you don't go out, walk down Main Street town and say, hey, Sarah, Bob, you're my PR press release writer. You know, come on, come do this because there's competition for the job. Right. And even though you say, well, but there's some jobs there's less competition for, like maybe, you know, greeter at a restaurant. It still has to be on time, friendly, et cetera, et cetera, as ways of doing this. And by the way, of course, the whole landscape of jobs.

28:35Simon Sinek:So what you're suggesting is the metrics will be different. So the quality of the press release is no longer the thing by which I'm judging you as a PR person. Now I'm judging, are you showing up on time? Are you a good team player? Did you get the data points from the client right? Did you know what the strategy was? Did you know what the strategy is? So you're arguing that it's still there, but the standards are different. Exactly. Just like, for example, to take your Iliad, the standards no longer – do you remember the 800 pages? issues but though but those those things are still there even if i have to do the work myself i still have to be on time i still have to understand the strategy the the the where i'm where i'm struggling where i'm trying to wrap my head around this right and i swear i have an open mind to this is i'm not trying to force any i don't know i don't have a particular bias which is and i've talked about this publicly before which is i know that i am smarter a better problem solver, a better critical thinker, not because I have a book, but because I wrote a book, right?

29:42Simon Sinek:The awful slog of writing a book made me better at the things that I like to be good at, you know, critical thinking and the like, pattern recognition. And I could have asked the machine to write the book for me, and it would have done a fairly decent job, but the outcome might have been excellent, but the process was missing. And you are as smart as you are, not simply because you were born smart, but when you built your company, you built it and you went through the hell of building it and the struggles and the setbacks, and you stuck with it and the grit, which contributed to all of your intelligence, wisdom, and perspective today.

30:30And you wouldn't be as smart as you are now

30:33Simon Sinek:or have the perspectives you have now had you not gone through the shit. Yeah, and what I'm saying is there will be similar kinds of struggle and evolution, right? Because, and the struggle changes. I mean, look at like accounting. You know, 60 years ago, 70 years ago, accounting was very heavily like i write down all the numbers in the books i do all the advertising you know the the addition and all the rest yeah measure all that then when like spreadsheets came along people said oh my god accountants they're all gonna be out to work they're all gonna like they're no longer gonna do this well now accounting is strategic it's like no no i trust the the the computer system will the math is fine the math will do all that and i'll you know if something doesn't look like i'll go where does this why does this look wrong like what what is leading this It's usually it's a data error.

31:22Simon Sinek:Yeah. And what you're doing is you're applying a different kind of thinking to it. Right. And I don't think that new different kind of thinking is necessarily bad. I also don't think it's necessarily always better. I think it's a transformation. I do think that, for example, you know, the fact that we now, you know, this is like, again, like the calculator example, very few are your phone number example. very few of us, like if you said, we're going to compete in a speed long division competition, we'd be sitting there going, okay, fuck, remember how to do this? Can't bring out my smartphone for this one.

32:01And so, you know, there are some losses, but with those losses come other gains. Yeah. And the intensity of the competitive moment of how we, and the reason I started with school is because school is how we kind of do the basic provisioning for entering into the competitive moments. The way that we do that is, I think, kind of up to us. And I, by the way, I have confidence, like the reason I don't like go and write a lot about that and do that, I have confidence that we will over time work that out. Like that, that an overtime is not like a long time.

32:35Simon Sinek:I mean, net, net, net what you're saying, and I think accurately so is we don't know. Yeah, 100%. But what we do know is that nature pours imbalance in a vacuum and it'll find equilibrium. And just as technologists love to say, 20 years ago, 80 % of the jobs today didn't exist. Well, so too, all the people who talk about all the job loss, yes, that will happen, or at least some degree of it will. However, 80 % of the jobs 20 years from now don't exist now that we can't even imagine. It was only a couple of years ago that people said the future is prompting and you're going to take you're going to be a professional prompter.

33:15Simon Sinek:Well, that lasted like six months because it turned out didn't matter how good your promise where the machine got smarter. Yes. So we're already getting the predictions wrong about what the future of employment looks like. And this is the thing. This is part of the reason I wrote Super Agency. Most people go, you can't predict the future. Oh, my God, terror, terror, terror. Because it's a little bit like if you said, hey, you're going to get in the airplane and you're not going to predict if it can land. You don't know if he can land. I'm not going to get in the airplane. Right. Of course. But the thing is, is this is what our whole life is.

33:45We just blind ourselves to most of it. That's the reason I use the drive to L.A. It's like, can you guarantee that I can get to L.A. completely safely? Absolutely not.

33:56Simon Sinek:Zero. Right. But it's like, okay, reasonable enough. And then the whole discussion becomes as, okay, well, what's the level of risk? Now, if I thought the level of risk was we're handing every five-year-old a trigger with an atom bomb, it'd be like, okay, that's a very bad idea. Right. Right. Don't do that. And like, for example, if someone said, hey, I'm going to take the AI system today and I'm going to run the nuclear defense system with it. You're like, yes, there have been bad movies about that. You know, Terminator, War Games, don't do that. But that doesn't mean don't build AI. That doesn't mean, you know, like, you know, for example, like Sudhartha Mukherjee and I are doing is like, how can we accelerate the cure of cancer?

34:40Oh, this reminded me of the note that I wanted to say earlier, just so people hear it. My optimism is not just a blind faith or a reasoned faith in the future. We have a line of sight to creating a medical assistant that's as good or better than current GPs available to everyone who can access a smartphone on the planet that runs for less than$5 an hour. The quality of human life elevation for that is immeasurable. It is so large that it's life-changing. So are there prizes that are worth playing for here that are actually really important? And they're not just like abstractions about like, oh, good, we'll be able to code a lot better.

35:26Okay. This is the perfect segue to go back to the second rabbit hole that I was going to go down about the changing nature of science fiction, as you articulated, which it was very, very optimistic.

35:37Simon Sinek:And it became dystopian at some point. Why was science fiction so optimistic? for so many years? And where are we getting the optimistic views of the future now, if not from science fiction? I think it was optimistic because people allowed themselves to simply be amazed by what technology can create. And I actually do think that some remembrance of that simple amazement is a very good thing. I mean, like, For example, one of the things that I say about, you know, chat GPT and Copilot and Gemini and Claude is if you're encountering any serious decision in your life, you should always consult for a second opinion.

36:27It's a little different about a first opinion to be a little bit more careful. But I've literally had like a friend of mine was at a hospital with his cousin where he was uncertain about what that hospital was telling the cousin. Consulted GPT-4 and GPT-4 said, go to another hospital. Got to the other hospital and the people at the hospital said, it's a good thing you're here because two hours later you'd be dead. Right. And and fix it because the first hospital is like, I'll take some antibiotics. You're fine. And it's like, and that second opinion is a hugely valuable thing. And so I think that's where we kind of are already.

37:05And that's the simple amazement, the, oh my gosh, these really amazing things can happen. And by the way, how do we evolve as human beings? We're homo techni more than homo sapiens. We evolve through technology, not just things like this podcast or the glasses that you and I are wearing or, you know, these kinds of things. But, you know, the books and all the rest, there's all kind of evolution through technology. So that's what I think is a thing that we kind of shifted off of. Now, in terms of the optimism today, I think that it's much harder because it's a little harder to state that simple optimism without getting a lot of critique.

37:52and like people say, well, it's very nice and good for you to say, as a technologist inventing this, that's going to change the world. What about all the people who aren't inventing the technology and just have to kind of go along with it? And you go, well, whether or not I do it or not, the technology is going to change and it's going to go through it. So I'm in it because I'm trying to shape it in a way that would be best for them and best for kind of our children and grandchildren and future generations and future societies and all the rest. But I do understand that kind of agency question, part of the reason why I called it super agency.

38:22But so it means that, like, for example, I get tons and tons of critique, but I'm not, I call it an intellectually honest optimist, which by the way, I am. But like, I'm a commercial, I'm an investor, you know, I'm a technologist, etc. Because that's the kind of critique you run into. And so I don't really know where the sources of optimism come. And that's part of the reason, like, you know, in my normal life right now, I would be more focused on like building the cancer drug cures than writing the book Super Agency. But I think that voice needs to be heard. I would be completely delighted when it's other people.

39:07And I do track the other, you know, the other, you know, kind of really great leading AI voices like Ethan Mollick and other people and try to support them and help them in terms of what they're doing because it's really important.

39:18Simon Sinek:Can I share a theory as to why I think we had more optimism in our science fiction then and what happened to it? I think it's the Cold War. I think because one of the, you know, great, great competitions exist on three tensions, I'll call them, I guess. there's an existential tension, life or death. There's an economic tension. Are we going to make money and be able to provide for ourselves, our economy, our families? And the third one is the philosophical one, that we have a philosophy, an ideology that we believe in, and we belong to this ideology, and it gives us a sense of camaraderie and patriotism, but it also connects us, right?

40:00And I would argue that our science fiction, in part, was a reflection of our ideology

40:10Simon Sinek:that was competing against, at the time, Soviet-style communism. And so if you look at all our utopian versus dystopian science fiction, it was, we all get along, we live in peace, there's prosperity, we're accepting, we're including of people who are alien to us, literally in many cases. And there were conflicts along the way, but we want to include everybody else. And this was an exaggerated and tangible depiction of our values to remind us what we stand for as we stand in great competition against the thing that would challenge that idealism or that ideology. And idealism is the reflection of the ideology.

40:53Simon Sinek:And then with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we still had the economic competition versus everybody else. We still have the existential competition. We still would like to live in peace and we still have enemies. But I would argue that the ideological thing kind of just went away. And I think America in particular kind of forgot what it stood for because there was nothing challenging it. There was nothing standing in opposition. And so I think our science fiction became dystopian because now it was us versus ourselves. It was no longer us versus somebody else. And if you look at where we've ended up, it is largely us versus ourselves right now.

41:32Simon Sinek:The great competition in the United States against the United States is the United States. I think that an opposing ideology in the world, an ideology that is different to ours, would breed the need for people to tell stories of, if we follow our ideologies, this is what the world will look like to remind us that we stand for something great, something good, something worth fighting for, something worth dying for. And I think that's the reason our science fiction became dark. Yeah, because it was less, it was more of a left to ourselves, the internal, like we are the thing versus, is no, no, our ideology is this is a golden future that we're fighting for versus yours.

42:21Simon Sinek:Versus an external force that would stand in our way. And, you know, from too many years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there was no balance of power. So there was nothing to tell us that we were wrong other than somebody like we fought, we now have factions inside our country telling ourselves that we are wrong. Where back in the day, we still fought like cats and dogs. We still had Republicans and Democrats. We had all of that nonsense. But at the end of the day, the external existential threat was worse than the internal one. Where today, the external existential threat is either misunderstood, not perceived, not recognized, or seen as less threatening than whatever is inside the country.

43:09Simon Sinek:And that's kind of how empires collapse, isn't it? Yeah. Usually acts of suicide, not homicide or whatever the side is of superpowers. Long decay. Superpower side. Yes. Well, and we've seen it Roman Empire, we've seen it the British Empire. Yeah, they're all kind of the same. So I guess what I'm positing, which is should folks like you and me not preach? Should we not be preaching? I mean, I guess you and I already do. I guess I already asked and answered, which is we are attempting to preach an idealistic vision of the future. You know, I work very hard to make my message available to anyone who wants to believe in it regardless of somebody's politics because i believe it's available to anyone who is a human being to to live in the vision of the world that i imagine and my work though may may not maybe not science fiction is definitely idealistic and so is it not the responsibility of to your point to to those movie to those filmmakers should should should we not start preaching again an idealized future that's worth striving for?

44:29Simon Sinek:I guess, again, it's a rhetorical question. Duh. Well, I think that's a moral requirement of good leadership. It's part of the reason why I talk to the various, you know, very smart, very well-meaning critics. And I also say, and here is the positive version, the elevation of humanity. And by the way, one of the subtle things of it is we would like to, in human condition, I think diminish how much our condition is beating up the evil people. It's like, no, how do we, how do we elevate? Like if like, to some degree, if you're a good person, it's, it's how do we elevate people versus how to like, like, like it's just the ordering one or two, how do we elevate people?

45:11How do we prevent the bad people?

45:13Simon Sinek:Yeah. If you're a good person, that's the order. If you're a bad person in part, it's the other order. Yeah. Right. It's the, you still need to be able to know what you, I think idealism is ethereal. It's hard to see. It's hard to imagine. An enemy is tangible. And it's much easier to know what you stand for if you can see what you stand against. And even Jobs back in the day, and I'm curious what you did at LinkedIn, but Jobs, he still had Big Blue and he still had Microsoft. And he still articulated an enemy that was standing in the way of his idealism, but the idealism came first. Yes. And so I'm curious what was, you know, when, when, when, as, as you were building LinkedIn, like who, who was, who was standing in the way, what was the grand enemy standing in the way of the idealism that you promoted?

46:01Simon Sinek:it? Well, it probably were two things. One was kind of a social norm that was bad for society and bad for individuals, which was no one should have a CV posted on public posted online. This is like, it was like, no, no, you're, you're disloyal to your organization. And so therefore, you know, you shouldn't do that. And I was like, no, actually, in fact, that's better for the individual's opportunity. That's better for society, maximizing the opportunity of individuals and the creation of their best work. And it's a little bit more challenging for organizations because you can't just hold on to your people because no one knows who they are.

46:43That was part of the reason why they wanted that myth of if your CV is online, maybe you don't get the promotion or bonus, or maybe we fire you, et cetera. I mean, literally very early days in LinkedIn, it was like, oh shit, I want to be on LinkedIn because maybe I'll get fired for being on LinkedIn. It's like, and you know, um, various, some companies like try to ban people from being on LinkedIn. So there's that. And then there's the old industry. Um, you know, the various, you know, like, um, monster.com and everything else for kind of job listings versus the way the world should be, which is when you have an opportunity,

47:20Simon Sinek:you should be reaching out to people that, that you have, And people can reach out to you too, but it should be both directions for kind of figuring that out. And, you know, it's funny if, if with this conversation, if I were to phone my younger self and doing it, I probably would have probably would have been better to phrase it more as a grand, as a grand enemy versus just an idealistic vision, which is more of what I was doing, because it probably would have been more motivating to the cohesive collection of the group in order to do. This is the problem with enemies and negativity, right? Which is it's incredibly powerful.

47:59Simon Sinek:You can rally people incredibly well. And I think that's part of the problem, which is you can rally people with negativity, but to what end? Yes. You know, and it's a short-lived. I mean, short-lived. It could be 20 years. But the point is that it's got a finite end to it. Whereas having the idealism and viewing the enemy as simply the thing standing in the way of our ideals, Which is why, to Jobs' credit, it was IBM, then it wasn't IBM, then it was Microsoft, and then it wasn't Microsoft. He kept replacing the thing that was standing in the way, but it was never about IBM or Microsoft to begin with.

48:34Simon Sinek:It was always about the vision. And so your idealism was ethereal, but if you were able to, because it's quite a populist message, which is power to the people, right? Which is how dare the corporation stand in the way of my opportunity, you know? And ironically, by allowing me opportunity and giving me some agency, there's that word again, the corporation will actually benefit because I'm sometimes proudly saying where I work. Or now business can be done because I wanted to just reach out to you to work with you, not because I'm trying to poach you. Yes, exactly. And it actually has benefited the corporation in a magical twist of irony as it always turns out to be that way.

49:18Exactly.

49:19Simon Sinek:Can I ask you a question that I don't understand? I mean, I kind of have a theory, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Why is it, and maybe this is not true, but I think it's true.

49:33Simon Sinek:when a male entrepreneur has some sort of liquidity event company goes public he sells the company whatever and comes into generational wealth if you ask them what do you do now they say i'm an investor right and so now i know they give to philanthropy i know they do philanthropic works but they define themselves as investors which i find funny because you've just made more money than you'll need ever. And now your goal is to make more money. And like, oh, you've got a fund now. Oh, wonderful. Whereas when you talk to females who have some sort of liquidity event where they have now generational wealth and you ask them, what do you do?

50:12Simon Sinek:They say, I'm a philanthropist. And of course they do investing, but they define themselves first as philanthropists. Why can't all people who sell a company or go public and come into more money than they'll ever need, Why can't every single one of them define themselves as philanthropists first? Well, they certainly can. It's probably... Why don't they? Why don't they? It's not a pattern that I've observed perhaps as clearly as you. I could be wrong. It's an initial observation. Yeah. But you know what I, my hypothesis would be in that is that what's the fitness function by which you're awarded status by people around you, which is part of the kind of competitive game.

51:05Simon Sinek:And, and, and, and men it's money. Yeah. And, and for women, it's more like, do you care about society and community? You're a good person. Yes. You're a good person. So So that would be my hypothesis. I think that's right. And what I would hope is that everybody thinks of themselves as becoming a philanthropist. Because I think that the – and it isn't just if you made a bunch of money and now have more money than you know what you can possibly do with in human life. And by the way, the reason why people continue to make money is for all kinds of reasons. Some of it's, you know, that's what they know how to do.

51:50Some of it's competitive. Some of it's, that's what they think the meaning of their life is. Some of it's like, hey, I know how to behave philanthropically with that money.

52:01Simon Sinek:But I think it goes back to our conversation about idealism and the future, which is, because I think it's an articulation of values, right? Yeah. The value that we are espousing, or at least embraced by men more than women, which is money is the metric. And even if you have already, quote unquote, won, you want everybody to know that you're still trying to make more. I wonder if this was the 1950s, if that would be the same. Or is it this modern version of our values that's become a little bit distorted and a little bit more materialistic? materialistic? I don't know the answer. I'm just curious.

52:42Well, I don't know either. Although one of my high school history teacher's favorite expressions, which I really have come to embrace is things aren't like they used to be and never were. And so it's kind of a, be a little cautious about the mythos. Right.

53:02Simon Sinek:Because we like to idealize the past. Yes. Romanticize it. Yes. Now, my earlier question is, for example, when I was thinking about how your question applies to me, and I would say I probably would have started with the word investor. But the reason I would have started with the word investor is probably not because I'm looking to kind of occupy that social status niche. Right. You're quite different. Yeah. As much as like the philanthropy I do, I think of as investing, like investing in kind of humankind, investing in human potential. And a lot of the same mechanisms, like does it have a scalable economic model?

53:46You know, that kind of stuff still applies.

53:49Simon Sinek:But it's a giving mentality versus a taking mentality. Yeah, but even like, for example, like part of having been successful as an entrepreneur and successful as an investor, I'm now no longer interested in investing and putting a lot of time into things that like I put in a dollar and I make$10 and it's only the$10. I'll do it if it trips across it because I know what to do with the$10 in terms of philanthropic investment. But I look at like what kinds of things actually make the world the more the way it should be. It's like, for example, the Airbnb was the first investment that I pitched to Greylock.

54:25And part of it was like, actually, in fact, this unlocks the world as it should be. Right. This is that that that's what's essential about this. And of course, it's a great economic investment. Yeah, but that's part of it. And by the way, again, it's kind of a little de rigueur to kind of think about capitalism as bad amongst, you know, kind of call it educated, you know, highly educated liberal circles. And it's like, no, actually, in fact, you know, to your earlier thing about Adam Smith, it's not just Adam Smith as the wealth of nations. It's Adam Smith as the theory of moral sentiments. And that's actually extremely important to understand about what's going on here.

55:07And if you're not sophisticated about that, your critique is useless.

55:12Simon Sinek:Yeah. You're different than your peers. You're different than a lot of other unicorn founders. And I don't think you're a part of the longevity obsession, are you? No. I mean, look, of course we'd all like to live a few years. We'd all like to live long, happy lives. But like you're not, you don't fit that same profile. It's one of the things I really like about you, which is you are much more yourself. You're very comfortable in who you are. Look, it gets back to that science fiction, right? It's like, what are we trying to do? What is the path of humanity? And how do we contribute? Can you just share one specific story of something that you were involved in that at some point throughout your career?

55:59Simon Sinek:It doesn't even matter if it was commercially successful or not. I'm just real curious. one thing that you were involved in that you absolutely loved being a part of this thing, this project, this event. And if everything in your life was like this one thing, you'd be the happiest person alive. Oh, interesting. I like diversity, which is a problem with that, the answering your question, because multiple different things is a good thing. But so like just one thing again and again. One specific thing that you were part of, it doesn't matter about its commercial viabilities for commercial sizes. But like when you look back and you think about that experience, you're like, oh, amazing.

56:34You know, it's probably unlocking things where people have...

56:39Simon Sinek:Tell me a specific one. A specific one. No, no. I'm just the pattern of it. It's like, part of the reason I'm answering it, taking me a few, like, you know, some, a minute or two to kind of, is there's many of them. And it's kind of like the one is kind of a challenging question. Pick one of those. Yeah. Well, so, you know, part of the thing that I love about, actually, I'll use being an investor, is that you are giving someone the shot to do that life's work that makes them, that is something epic. I get it, but give me something specific. Maybe it was something that happened during the early days of LinkedIn.

57:30Simon Sinek:It can be absolutely anything, but when you look back, something specific. I hear you about the investing, but something specific that I can relive with you. Yeah. So, well, look, it's a little micro element, but it's a very micro on this. Go for it. For that thing. It will start with the basis of one of my frustrations with LinkedIn. Yeah. So my basic frustration with LinkedIn is the vast majority of people approach being connected to other people on LinkedIn as kind of, oh, this is how I navigate. This is for me. So years back, I was having a conversation with a friend and serial entrepreneur, Paul English.

58:17And we were sitting around very early days in LinkedIn, six years in or seven years in. And he's the first person who on an unaided basis, reflected to me what I think of LinkedIn and what I was trying, which is like, when I connect with someone on LinkedIn, it's because I am giving them a gift of how can I potentially help you by connecting with you with other people in my network. Right. Like it's it's making it easier for me to help you in our journey through life and work together. And and Paul was the first person outside of LinkedIn who said, oh, I love LinkedIn because of this. Right. And I was like, yes.

58:56And, you know, and since then there have been five more. But, you know, like that was a, that was the, you see the, what I'm trying to create for making us more collaborative, cooperative, you know, like life is a team sport. It's how I help other people, how I give it as a gift. You see that. And that was, you know, maybe that was a version of feeling seen. Yeah.

59:21Simon Sinek:Tell me an early specific happy childhood memory. Something specific I can relive with you. Not like we went to my grandparents every weekend. One specific event that I can relive with you. Well, okay. This one seems a little funny. But as a seven-year-old beating my grandfather in chess. Right. Say more. Well, so my grandfather. You think of one particular instance. Well, it was the first time. Okay. So the first time you beat your grandfather in chess. Tell me about it. Well, so he was playing chess with me. And it was like each time, from like five to seven. Right. Like, you know, he'd win, he'd win, he'd win.

59:59I was trying to figure out how could he be doing this? Like, why can't I do this? And then it helped me start figuring out what, how the world worked and what was going on and what the pieces were and, and that kind of thing. And that was that the, it was kind of the epiphany of suddenly seeing, ah, this is how this works. It wasn't so much like, ah, I beat grandpa as much as it was like, ah, I can now see the world as it is. I can see more about what's going on and I can navigate it and participate in it.

1:00:36Simon Sinek:This entire conversation. Those are obviously not the words I would have used as a seven-year-old. No, no, no, of course. As a seven-year-old, I was like, ah, I beat you, grandpa. Yes, exactly. No, I get that. the, I mean, this whole conversation, everything you talk about, it's about that undying, this striving to understand how it works for the benefit of others. Yeah. And inclusive of myself. I don't think of others as not including myself. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. It's a selfish selflessness all at once. Yes. Yeah, totally. And, you know, you talk about sort of the plan about adding to the discourse, which is, you know, I'm going to write this stuff so that people can understand how the world works, so that people can take it in for the benefit.

1:01:24Simon Sinek:And even the LinkedIn realization, which is here's how human beings should work. And if you do it this way as an act of giving rather than an act of taking, we all win. And the original philosophy of LinkedIn, which is if you allow people to display where they work and put their CVs up on the world, no, no, no, this is how the world should work. and even your AI discussion, which is this unbelievable striving to understand how the world actually works for the benefit of everybody. And even the way you describe your investing, which is if I can figure out how something works, you said, it's not how much can I get from it.

1:02:05Simon Sinek:That's sometimes the sort of the lucky strike extra. But rather, if we get this right, how much will you get from this? And I don't mean financially. Well, and also the person's life work is not just for them. That's one of the things. Your life work is not just for you. The person's life work is not just for them. Yes. It's for us. And that's my rub, the people who define themselves as investors versus philanthropists, which is whether, you know, just going on the definition of the words, which is my life's pursuit is now for accumulation for myself, you know, versus my life's pursuit is to figure out how to way to give it all away or at least make it so that others benefit more than me because I've had my luck.

1:02:50Simon Sinek:It's a mindset rather than an activity because all philanthropists invest and all investors give away money, I hope. But it's the hierarchy. It's the order. And you talked about that hierarchy and that order in other circumstances. The order matters. And I think this is one of my favorite things about you, which is why I think you're so different from almost all the founder leaders who sort of occupy that unicorn space, which is you are unabashedly in it for others. Yeah. And there's a few others, you know, Bill Gates, Reed Hastings, there's a few others, but yes. Yeah. I'm not saying you're unique, but you are, but it, but it's a small group where you are unabashedly.

1:03:35Simon Sinek:Yeah. It's the unabashed. it yes well it's the way we should be it's the way we should be and that is shouldn't be the work of science fiction it should be real real it should be science fact just fact fact yes you know but i am so glad you exist i'm so glad you're putting your visions in the world and i really hope that the world that you imagine is the world that we build well that's that's part of the reason why, you know, I do this work, you do that work and what's what we're hoping for. So good. Thanks for coming on. What a joy. Always a joy. I look forward to the next one. I look forward to a meal in person too.

1:04:15Simon Sinek:I know we have to do that. I have, I forgot. We like to ask every one of our guests, just curious, if you have some sort of life hack, some sort of shortcut, some sort of thing that you figured out that helps you be more effective, efficient, or productive as a person? Well, I mean, here's very apropos our current conversation and current moment is anytime I'm working on a new problem or kind of a new thought, part of what I do is I think about what's the position of human expertise that would most inform what I'm doing. And then I prompt AI model of your choice with, with this position of human expertise, give me a, you know, analyze this problem for me or give me a solution or something else.

1:05:09And it accelerates how you kind of go through this. And I do this just, you know, kind of constantly. And like, for example, you know, one of the ones I'm, I'm planning on doing recently is, you know, a friend of mine was kind of trying to say, I should take enneagrams, you know, and personality types more seriously. And I'm going to go throw out a set of prompts and ideas into probably GPT-5 now and say, and learn this and see, do I think this is a useful pattern for understanding how we, you know, we kind of work together, we travel together, we live together, et cetera. And, you know, and that's the hack.

1:05:51Simon Sinek:I mean, it's a good use of the tech. Yeah. Reed, such a pleasure, truly such a pleasure. Thank you so much. Likewise. I look forward to the next. A Bit of Optimism is brought to you by The Optimism Company and is lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius and Devin Johnson. If I was able to give you any kind of insight or some inspiration or made you smile, please subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts for more. And if you're trying to get answers to a problem at work or want to advance a dream, Maybe I can help. Simply go to simonsynic.com. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other.